But Ellie really hated him for making her get rid of Eva. Ellie was weak and let him throw her baby out of the car. He cared so little about his own daughter that he threw her out as though she were little more than trash. Ellie despised him for it, and she let him know that every chance she got.
“Stop telling me that you hate me!” he said to her, exasperated. Two years had passed, then three, and five, and Ellie still told him how much she hated him. “The kid is gone. She has new parents and a new life, and I’m sure she’s fine by now.”
But Ellie couldn’t believe him. She yearned for a simpler life. She had even tried to go back home, but her parents were gone. They moved and she had no way of finding them. All she knew was that the big house that she grew up in was empty. And she blamed him for that, too.
They fought viciously.
“You’ll never change! You’ll never let me go! I need to go home. I need to find my daughter. YOU’VE RUINED ME!” She slapped him and kicked at him. She scratched his beautiful face with her fingernails. She didn’t care if he was scarred. She wanted him to be as ugly on the outside as she felt on the inside.
At only nineteen, Ellie had abandoned her daughter, her parents, and herself. She was living in a tiny apartment with a man who kept her drugged all of the time.
“It’s the same fight, Ellie. The same damned fight!” He grabbed her and pulled her to him hard. He was crushing her with his arms until his face was only an inch from hers. His green eyes pierced her brown ones until she had to look away.
Ellie knew that as long as Jonas was alive, she would never get away from him. She imagined that he was dead. She daydreamed about it, dreamt about it. She didn’t know if she could really ever survive his death, or if she could be the one to end him. But she did know that if she didn’t, it would be the end of her.
Ellie considered ending it all for herself, but she dreamt of finding her Eva again. She knew that as long as Eva was out there, she would need to find her baby girl. She didn’t care how long it took her. She just knew that she needed to be with her daughter.
There was hopelessness and futility in her life every day. When Ellie looked in the mirror, she hated what she saw—a disgusting reflection of a weak, desperate woman who allowed Jonas to take everything away. She had been too weak and too stoned to fight, but she was finally beginning to find clarity, and she realized that she wasn’t happy.
When she met Jonas, she was a young, spoiled little girl flirting with danger. She was showing her parents that she could make her own choices and do what she wanted. She loved Amy and James, but she felt that they owed her. When they left for Europe, and Ellie had to fend for herself and Eva, she felt betrayed.
Looking back, Ellie realized that they were only trying to make her stronger. But it was too late. There was no going back to them now. She had made her choices and lost the only real love she had ever known in them. And there was no way she could return now without Eva.
She hated Jonas so much at times. She imagined the blood oozing out of him, thick and red. She thought of how it would look, and smell, and feel, and she pictured how she would make it flow. Do I shoot him, or stab him? How do I kill him?
She loved him, but she also hated him for what he had done to her, and what he had done to their baby. Ellie imagined Jonas’ green eyes wide and staring up in disbelief. She knew he could never believe that she was strong enough to hurt him. Jonas thought she was weak. He used both the drugs and his words to keep her that way.
But life seemingly got better, and she forgot about it for a while. They lived in a condo, which Jonas promised Ellie could decorate as she pleased.
“I told you that I would take care of you, baby,” he said on moving day. “I always keep my word to you.” He kissed Ellie full on the lips. It was important to him that he took care of her. He had never seen a man take care of his momma the way he was taking care of Ellie, and he was proud of himself. He had built a good business catering to wealthy kids and their parents, and had a reputation for being discreet.
But Ellie didn’t care about the condo, or the beautiful clothes, or about decorating. She still dreamt about that night when she held Eva in her arms for the last time and had let her go.
“Mommeeeee, don’t leave me!” Eva’s tiny voice still echoed in her ears. She was clutching Betsy, wearing Jonas’ oversized shirt for warmth. Ellie had preserved the picture of Eva in her mind, and nothing could steal it from her. When she needed it the most, she closed her eyes and pictured Eva with the pretty pink dress. Only in Ellie’s mind, it was still clean and pretty and lacy. It wasn’t soiled with urine and dirt like it had been on the night she last saw her.
“Mommeeeee, I need you. Don’t leave me!” Eva’s voice was small, like tiny tinkling bells, and Ellie couldn’t get it out of her mind. She felt like her head would explode with the sound of it. Nothing that she did could get Eva’s voice out of her mind.
“Mommy, I peed. MOMMMEEEEE…” Ellie could see Eva disappearing as she watched through the back window of the car. Sometimes in her dreams, the car was the beater car that they had driven off in that night, and sometimes it was a limousine. Sometimes the car was a boat, but the dream was always the same. Ellie was leaving Eva behind, and Eva was running after her crying, her little face stained with dirt and tears.
Ellie woke up one day and decided that she had to do something to find some peace. She needed to try to find Eva, and find her parents. But she knew that Jonas would never let her go. She knew that she would need to do something to get away from Jonas before she could ever return to find her family.
Chapter Six
Petey Sullivan
JONAS’ EMPLOYEES were like all of his women, except for Ellie. Easy, obedient, and stupid.
Petey Sullivan had always been loyal. Jonas knew that he could count on him for anything, but killing wasn’t anything that Petey had bargained for.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to, Jonas, but I can’t kill nobody. I just can’t do it.” Petey was beside himself, shuffling his big body back and forth as he shifted his feet and looked down to the floor.
Jonas smiled at him with his girly lips. The guys secretly thought that Jonas looked like a girl with his big full lips and his pretty boy look. But for some strange reason, the girls seemed to dig him. Petey just didn’t get it, and he didn’t really like Jonas. But Petey’s big brother, Mike, had hooked him up with the job, and would kick Petey’s ass if he screwed it up. Petey wasn’t sure who he was more scared of, Mike or Jonas. At the moment, it was Jonas.
Petey had heard the stories of what happened to people when Jonas got mad. They weren’t ever seen again, or they were seen with missing digits, or unexplained scars. For as big as Petey was, he didn’t like violence, and he didn’t like getting hurt.
“Petey, you’ll do whatever it is that I need you to do. And if that involves, um, disposing of someone, then you’ll just have to do it.” Jonas’ voice had a hard edge to it as he stared Petey down.
Petey was uncomfortable. He didn’t sign up for this. The money that Jonas paid him over the past year was good, but Petey wasn’t into hurting nobody. Usually Jonas just had him take packages from place to place, and pick stuff up for him. Jonas had other people to do the “people thing.” Petey had just wanted to handle the packages.
“It’s simple really,” Jonas said staring at him with his dark green eyes. “You’ll stop the car, you’ll hold onto the Missus, and Sy will take care of the rest. You think you can handle that?”
Petey could tell that Jonas was getting really frustrated with him. It was best if he just agreed to whatever Jonas wanted him to do. Jonas’ reputation preceded itself, and Petey was just a small town kid compared to him.
“I can do that,” Petey said, his voice squeaking as he said it. He was twenty-three, big and bulky, a small-time player most of the time, and he was okay with that. He had been that way with football, and in everything else in his life. He knew he wasn’t that smart, and he
didn’t want the responsibility. He just wanted to do what he was told.
But blood made him squeamish, and it made him upset when girls cried. He never knew what to do when they cried. And with what Jonas was asking him to do, he was sure to see a woman cry, and it made him sick to his stomach.
He drove down that old road with Sy, and they cornered the rich couple. It had all gone as planned. But then Petey couldn’t take it no more, and something inside of him, for the first time in his life, made him act different from what he was told. He didn’t want to do it, but he couldn’t watch the pretty lady cry no more. What Sy did to her husband was bad enough, but what Sy was getting ready to do to her next, Petey couldn’t take it. He looked at her tiny face, her pretty eyes staring at him, terrified and pleading.
Petey could never hurt a woman, and he couldn’t let Sy. So he stopped him, and then he disappeared, leaving Sy dead from the big gash in his head.
Petey knew he had to hide. He couldn’t face Jonas and lie to him. Petey wasn’t a good liar, and he knew that Jonas would see right through him. He didn’t even care if he wasn’t paid. He didn’t want to be paid for this. So he hid at his cousin, Lily’s house. He knew nobody would look for him there. Lily was the old maid of the family, and nobody even talked to her anymore, except Petey. He just didn’t tell anyone.
He showed up at her door on foot. He had ditched the car that he and Sy drove in, after hiding the bodies as best as he could, and then he took off on foot. Him and the pretty woman. He didn’t know what else to do with her, and he had to carry her every step of the way, keeping to the back roads and hiding in the woods. Sy had started to hurt her, started to tear her clothes off her, started to hit her, but then Petey stopped him. But not before Sy knocked her down, and she hit her head on a rock, blood gushing out freely and staining her pretty blonde hair.
He snuck up to Lily’s door, exhausted. Her house was about five miles from the road they were on, isolated and quiet. She lived off money from her dead parents and rarely left the house.
“Petey!” Lily cried, her surprise obvious when she opened the door and saw him standing there. Her gray eyes widened in shock as she realized that he was covered in blood. She hadn’t seen her cousin in a few months, but she would’ve recognized him anywhere. “Are you hurt?”
It was dark outside and when he stumbled in, she realized he was carrying something, someone.
“Petey! Are you hurt? Are you okay?” Lily was suddenly afraid, and she looked outside to see if anyone was out there. She shut the door quickly and locked it behind them.
“No, no. I’m okay. But I think she may be hurt.” Petey was tired. The pretty lady didn’t weigh much, but after carrying her for five miles at a pretty good clip, he was beat. “I just need some water.”
Lily motioned to the couch where he set the woman down as gently as he could. The bleeding on her head had stopped a while ago, but she was still a mess, and needed cleaned up. She was unconscious but was starting to make little sounds, as if she wanted to wake up, but couldn’t. Petey didn’t want her to wake up. He didn’t want her to look at him, remembering how he held onto her while Sy stabbed her husband. He shook his head at the memory of the blood. So much blood.
Lily’s voice brought him out of his reverie. “Go get cleaned up, Petey!” she ordered him. “There are some of Daddy’s old shirts upstairs. Those should fit you. Go get cleaned up, and I’ll take care of her. Bring your clothes down with you and we’ll burn them.”
Lily looked down at the tiny woman lying on her couch. Her beautiful soft hair was coated in dried blood, but Lily was used to cleaning up blood. She had done it so many times, and had become used to it by now. Daddy used to come home covered in blood, and sometimes he brought home his guys who were covered in blood. Lily learned never to ask questions. She just cleaned them up, sometimes even stitching their wounds. She thought she could get away from it. She decided to go to college, become a veterinarian, get married and have her own babies. But Daddy had called her home when he said he was dying, and she ended up taking care of him and his cancer for a decade, all of her dreams fading away. So now she was alone, but she had the money he left her, which wasn’t much comfort when she was all alone.
She took warm cloths and cleaned the woman up, careful not to reopen her wound. It wasn’t as bad as it looked once she got the crusted blood off. It could use a stitch or two, but that was it.
She cleaned up the dirt from the pretty woman’s face and admired how smooth and perfect her skin was. Lily wished she had been as pretty. All of her life, Lily knew just how plain she was. Not ugly, not hideous, just plain. Plain gray eyes, plain dishwater blonde hair, plain build. Nothing spectacular, nothing special, just plain. When she changed the woman into some of her own more sensible clothes, she saw that everything the woman wore was fine and expensive. Even her underwear.
Lily admired the woman’s clothes. She had money to buy clothes like that, but nowhere to wear them, and nobody to wear them for, so she didn’t. She just wore sensible clothes to fit her sensible, unremarkable life.
Lily could hear the shower running upstairs for what seemed like an hour. Petey must feel very dirty, she thought to herself. It was strange to hear the shower running when she wasn’t in it.
Finally, he came out, and was fresh and clean smelling like the Irish Spring soap in her shower. She liked it. He was surprised when he saw her and the woman. Lily had done a good job cleaning her up, and the woman lay peacefully on her couch.
“How is she?” he asked, his voice in a low whisper.
“She’s doing well. She only needed one stich, and she didn’t even flinch when I did it. I used a very small needle.” Lily lifted up the woman’s hair in the back of her head and showed him. The cut was barely visible now, and Petey breathed a sigh of relief.
“Is she going to be okay?” he was afraid of the answer.
“I don’t know. We will have to see when she wakes up. What happened to her?” Lily was full of curiosity. She was disappointed that her beloved cousin had taken this track in life, but intrigued with him, just as she had always been. He had been the only one in the family not to shun her, for reasons that she didn’t understand.
They left the woman sleeping on the couch and went into the kitchen.
Petey told her everything. He could always tell her everything. Ever since they were children, they had been close, until the families had divided over reasons that neither of them were completely clear about. But Petey refused to abandon her as the rest of her family had done.
She always admired him and thought how handsome and sweet he was. I don’t understand why nobody has ever snatched him up, she found herself thinking often, and feeling slightly incestuous in her thoughts.
She listened as she poured him a drink and made him something to eat. She was happy to have some company for once. After he had eaten and was full, she told him to go upstairs to rest.
“What about her?” he said pointing to the couch. The woman was still in a deep sleep, though she cried out every now and then.
“I’ll stay up with her. You can rest,” Lily said graciously. She was happy to have a mission, to have a task.
Petey looked at Lily with gratitude. “Thank you,” He said lumbering up the stairs. He was exhausted and needed to think of his next move. He didn’t like thinking. He just wanted to do what he was told. Now he was stuck having to think about what to do. I never should’ve taken that woman with me. I shoulda just left her there! Somebody would have found her! Now what the hell am I going to do with her?
Lily stayed up all night, watching the woman sleep. As the sun was coming up, the woman slowly opened her eyes and looked around. She looked across the room and saw a weary looking woman in her forties, sitting in an old recliner across from her. Lily’s eyes were closed as she leaned her head back, and the woman thought that she had a kind face. She looked up to the ceiling and tried to sit up, but the blinding pain in the back of her head told her to lie back do
wn. The woman could tell that she was in an old house; it smelled old anyway.
She realized suddenly that the woman in the recliner was staring at her. “Hi, I’m Lily.”
“Hello. I’m…I’m…” the woman on the couch was at a loss. Her mouth became dry and she felt herself panic. “I’m…” she couldn’t remember. Her mind was a blank.
Lily looked at her evenly, and the woman couldn’t read her. For a split second, Lily looked… grateful, but then she looked concerned. “It’s okay. Don’t push yourself. It’s common in this type of situation to not remember.”
“Situation?” the woman thought hard. “What kind of situation?”
“I mean, you just had a bad gash on your head. It would be a normal side effect to not remember.” Lily’s voice was comforting, and the woman felt a little better. Something about Lily made her feel safe.
The woman heard footsteps, and she looked up to see a large man coming toward her. Her big brown eyes grew wide in horror. She didn’t know why, but she was suddenly very afraid.
Chapter Seven
Ellie’s Sins
ELLIE STARED DOWN at Jonas. His green eyes that seduced her time and time again, staring up at her were wide in disbelief. Blood was oozing out of the side of his mouth, and he was clutching his chest where the bullet went in and exploded.
Ellie’s hands were shaking, and she was sweating uncontrollably. She wasn’t sure if she could kill the man she had once loved so desperately. But right then, she felt nothing as she aimed the gun at him and pulled the trigger.
Even as the bullet ripped into him and she heard his blood-curdling scream, she felt nothing. Nothing but relief. Nothing but freedom. She had felt like a caged animal for so long that she knew this was her only escape from Jonas’ prison. She had been his ever since she was a young girl, and now she was twenty-five, and now the only thing she needed was to find the baby she had abandoned so callously.
Losing Eva (The Eva Series Book 2) Page 4
